


All I see is you and me

by littlecountrymouse



Category: Animal Kingdom (TV)
Genre: Angst, Car Accidents, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 07:20:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17199080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlecountrymouse/pseuds/littlecountrymouse
Summary: You'd think that he'd have more concern for himself in the aftermath of a car accident. It turns out though, that all Adrian cares about is Deran.





	All I see is you and me

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! This is a prompt fill for anon on Tumblr, who wanted "stay with me." Hope you enjoy it, nonnymouse!
> 
> Fair warning though, I did write most of this while drunk off my ass and slipping into a food coma on Christmas day, but I have no idea where I meant to take it when i sobered up so I've sort of just winged it. The car accident though, is a mirror of what happened to me in 2009 - same injuries, same experiences.
> 
> It's also totally unbeta-ed, so if you catch any glaring errors, want to send me a prompt of your own, or just want to chat, hit me up here or at littlecountrymouse.tumblr.com

***

 

Adrian doesn’t know how it happened. One minute he’s going through a green light, headed home after a long day, the next he’s waking up pinned to the seat with more lights and noise and sensation than he can make sense of.

There’s a terrifying lack of anything at all in his left leg below his knee, and when the ramifications of that really hit home, Adrian starts to cry. A disembodied voice from somewhere behind him asks if anything hurts, and yeah - absolutely fucking everywhere. It should be overwhelming, but all he can think about is what he’ll do if he’s lost his leg, or even worse, if he's dying right now and doesn't know it.

If he dies in a fucking car accident when he and Deran have only just sorted their shit out, Adrian is going to be so pissed. And it's going to kill Deran.

Fuck. _Deran._ Adrian remembers that Deran's been in the car with him more times than not recently and jolts in the seat, much to the apparent distress of the paramedic working on keeping him very still while his car’s cut to pieces. He manages to flick his eyes across to the passenger seat and the relief he feels at seeing it clearly occupied by his bag, even if it's pinned in place by the odd shape of the door buckling in, nearly knocks him out. But it means that Deran will be at home worried sick because Adrian isn't where he's supposed to be.

“Need to call him,” he forces out, his words slurring together badly. “Need to call Deran.”

“No, bud, we gotta keep you still. You can make phone calls once you get out of here, okay?” The paramedic’s calm voice should be soothing, but Adrian’s just pissed that he’s being brushed off. 

“You gotta call him now.” Adrian’s head tries to loll against the seat, but the brace they’ve gotten onto him at some point stops him shifting much. Instead, he grabs for the paramedic’s shirt, missing and getting his neck instead but hey, his depth perception is shot and his hands are shaking. At least he got the guy at all. “He’s gonna freak, you gotta call him.”

There’s a brief pause where all Adrian can hear is the whir of machinery and the chatter outside his car, then the paramedic leans in front of him and catches his eye. “Alright, but you gotta stay still for me, okay? We don’t know how much damage you’ve got going on. We’re gonna hook you up to some pain relief, it should make things easier for you.”

Adrian will do whatever they want as long as they hurry the fuck up and make that phone call

He manages to stay still when the needle’s pushed into his skin and then he murmurs the answer when the guy asks for the code to his phone, (and Adrian’s got no idea how they even found it in the mess of his car.) After that, they really don’t need him for anything else, seeing as there’s only one ‘Deran’ in his phone, and that’s very appreciated seeing as Adrian’s about half a step from falling off the planet, the morphine hitting him in a rush.

He loses more time, drifting in an unpleasant space where he can kind of hear what’s going on, but he can’t reply when people talk to him and he can’t make his body do a damned thing he tells it to. He’s turned into a living ragdoll, shifted and pinned and pulled in different directions while his head spins him in circles. He’s also pretty sure he throws up at some point, and by the sound of it, hits one of the very nice people trying to get him out of his car in one piece. 

On the plus side, he doesn’t hurt anymore and can barely manage to make himself give a fuck about the possibilities of potentially losing a limb, or dying, because this could well and truly be it. He could be bleeding out and he wouldn't have a clue, too high to understand what the fuck is going on. 

Still, he wants Deran, and he can focus his brain enough to remember that he’s supposed to be here, or something along those lines. As he’s loaded into the ambulance, Adrian manages to string together one coherent thought where he hopes Deran hurries the hell up, because he could really do with having him here right now.

The thought of not having Deran next to him hurts in a way Adrian can’t figure out when he’s this fucked up, and he's penning a mental letter to the guy he's loved since before he understood what love really was. The morphine messes with his thought process so badly that he's only at the first paragraph when someone launches themselves in through the back door of the ambulance before it's closed.

“Adrian? Jesus _Christ.”_

Ah. There he is. Or isn’t, actually, because Adrian can’t manage to find Deran through the haze of hurt and shock and painkillers, the inside of the ambulance a blurred mix of colors and sounds that somehow contain Deran but don’t at the same time.

It’s only when his hand’s grabbed in a firm grip that Adrian manages to get a direction to look in, and even then it takes him a good ten seconds to find Deran’s face. He winces at the expression he’s wearing - somehow, it’s worse than he’d looked when he’d visited Adrian in prison, and he’d honestly thought that was as bad as it could get. At least this time he doesn’t look prepared to reach through a glass screen to kill Adrian, which should be an improvement, if Deran didn't look absolutely fucking _terrified._

Adrian seriously doesn’t like that face, but he doesn’t know how to make Deran stop doing it while he’s strapped to a stretcher. He tries instead to squeeze his hand as tight as he can manage, but even he can tell his strength is shot to hell and all he manages to do is make Deran look even more worried. 

“Don’t,” he rasps out, his throat raw from yelling. “I’m okay.”

He’s pretty sure that’s bullshit, but he has to try anyway.

Deran’s answering chuckle is low and humorless. “Yeah, you’re really not. Fuck, what happened, man?”

Adrian thinks he’s been asked that more than once tonight, and he’s wondered it himself a few times. He tries to shrug, but he’s pretty sure it doesn’t work. “Dunno.”

He can hardly hear himself, but Deran grimaces in response. Or it might be what the paramedic is saying to him, but everything outside of Deran sounds like Adrian is listening from underwater. “Don’t talk, okay? The guys here, they say you’ve fucked yourself up pretty bad. You’ve gotta stay relaxed, or it’ll get worse.” 

Oh, that does not mean good things, Adrian is sure. “My leg?”

When that doesn’t get the message across, leaving Deran looking thoroughly confused, he manages to summon up the energy and coordination to wiggle his left fingers down towards his foot. “Leg.”

“Oh! Yeah, you’re okay, man.” Deran leans down to press a kiss to his forehead, a small, tight smile on his face. “You got caught under the dash, might have some nerve damage, that’s all.”

Adrian murmurs something that he hopes sounds sufficiently happy, because the relief flooding his system takes away any possibility of his mouth working properly. Now that he’s got Deran and he knows he’s probably going to get to keep both his feet, the exhaustion and shock slam into him full-force and it’s suddenly difficult to keep his eyes open.

“ _Fuck._ No, hey, Adrian, stay awake, man.” Deran’s panicked voice mingles with the paramedic’s, Deran’s hand shaking at his shoulder. “You’ve got a head injury too, you gotta stay awake.”

Huh. That probably explains why Adrian wants so badly to just go back to sleep. He tries to stay awake though, for Deran’s sake, even though the ambulance’s movement on the road feels like when he slept in the back of people’s cars on the circuit. 

“Nonono, _Adrian_ , stay the fuck awake. Stay with me, babe.” Deran sounds so young and terrified, so much like he did way back when they’d nearly gotten caught the first time and he’d had to lie his way out of it, and Adrian hates that he’s caused that. Hates that he can’t do anything to fix it, because the world’s spiralling around him and he’s lost his grip on the edge.

“Please, just stay awake. I’m sorry, man, I’m sorry. Just stay awake. Stay with me, A, c’mon.” 

… Adrian has no idea why he’s apologizing, because Deran didn’t do anything wrong. But before he gets a chance to try and respond, he’s sliding down the rabbit hole into the dark.

***

Adrian wakes up four days later in a hospital bed, with an IV in one hand and Deran's worn-out body curled around the other in the most uncomfortable position he could possibly find.

The look in his eyes when he wakes up to find Adrian staring back at him is something Adrian's going to carry with him for the rest of his life, and he decides then and there that at some point he's going to ask this idiotic, soft hearted asshole to marry him.

Apparently his leg is broken in three places, half the muscles below his knee are torn and there's some nerve damage along the arch of his foot. It goes nicely with the internal bruising and his concussion, in Adrian's opinion, but he keeps that to himself because Deran looks like he's going to be sick every time he listens to one of the doctors run through the list.

There's at least six months of physical therapy ahead of him, no surfing for up to a year, and worst of all, no sex for eight to twelve weeks. 

(The look on Deran's face matches the one Adrian is sure is on his own when the doctor comes out with that particular line, and Adrian wonders how quickly he can convince his boyfriend to forget the orders.)

Apparently, he went through the light and got cleaned up by a speeding drunk who T-boned him at the intersection and pinned him to a pole. His poor old car is destroyed, but it's also the only thing that stopped him from losing his leg altogether. Deran putting him on his health insurance as the only listed employee at The Drop, (even though Adrian actually doesn't work there half the time,) is also the reason he's not going to drown in medical bills when he leaves the hospital this time.

All in all, it's a better outcome than Adrian expected in those terrifying minutes trapped in the wrecked shell of his car, and when he hobbles up the stairs into the house he and Deran share a week later, he feels considerably more optimistic about life. 

Still, he's going to have to buy the poor guy a ring sooner rather than later, or Deran is going to think he's trying to find new and inventive ways of trying to escape their relationship.


End file.
